26 December 2011

We’re on our way to Perth.  I’ll just type this as we go, and then move it to the blog when we get there, where we can get to the internet.  It’s Boxing Day here, which seems to be almost bigger than Christmas, with lots of sports test matches and a famous big sailboat race from Sydney to Hobart (capital of Tasmania).  Boxing Day started many years ago in England when the estate owners used to box up leftover food after Christmas and make gifts to their servants and tenants.  Most people here don’t even know how it came to be (We had to go online to find out).  Almost everyone who is still left in Albany is down at the beaches today.  Many people surf as part of their Christmas holidays.  As we travel toward Perth, we are meeting many cars on their way back to Albany after their Christmas in the city.

We had a fun visit with Erin’s family this morning before we left.  They made us cry when they sang the beautiful little song they did together in the Sacrament Meeting Program—I Can Hear His Voice, I think.  I don’t know what Ray was feeling, but I had an overwhelming feeling of gratitude that our children are faithfully teaching the Gospel in their homes.  It was so sweet.  It’s nice to visit with one family at a time sometimes, because we can talk to each one.  But we’ll call tomorrow when everyone but Rod’s family is at Dawn’s for dinner.  That will be fun to see.  But it may make me homesick.  Also, we’ll try to get on the internet at about 5:00 with Rodney’s family, if they can.  That’s 8:00 Tuesday morning for us.

It was a nice, but quiet Christmas for us.  Christmas Eve we made a visit to the Cowcills out on Henty Road.  We had some gifts for their children, and thought maybe that would get us in the Spirit a little more.  But the kids were gone, having their Christmas Eve with their dad.  We tried to find some carols on the radio as we travelled, but there were none!  Ray helped me make a quiche and some muffins for dinner (we had made some pumpkin pie the day before).  We had invited our Elders Martin and Ellingson over for dinner.  So that helped a lot.  We’re losing our Elder Martin this week to a transfer.  Anyway, we opened the movie from Dawn and Brenda, Seventeen Miracles, and watched it together before they went home.  It was so good.  Thank you so much, girls!

Christmas morning I woke up before Ray, and got thinking about a package I had seen under the tree before we went to bed, and I started to cry because I thought he had bought me something, and I didn’t have anything for him.  He heard me and assured me that he hadn’t broken our pact.  It was from the Elders!

We got ready and went to church.  It was a beautiful meeting, and Sister Duffield came!  Remember her?  She’s the non-member whose husband has been so faithful for so many years.  She heard that I would be singing, so she told her husband she wanted to come to church!  She came and hugged me several times and gave us chocolates.  I really hope to be able to help her gain her own testimony because she seems to respond to me.  I pray for her all the time.  We are their home teachers, so we do have Gospel discussions once a month.

We went home and opened our other gifts from Dawn and Brenda—thanks so much girls!  The music is beautiful, and your dad actually likes the ties!  The Elders had given us a little gift too, for which I thanked them each with a kiss on the cheek!  Ray helped me make a spinach salad for the BBQ dinner we had been invited to with two of the single adult girls and the Elders, so off we went!  They had prepared a really nice meal for us, complete with Christmas crackers and all!  (Crackers are these little festive paper boxes or tubes with paper ends sticking out on both sides.  You’re supposed to pull them with your neighbor at the table so that they pop, and then you find a paper hat inside and some little corny jokes.)  Sophie and Jacinta gave us a bag of goodies, including a box of sparklers.  After our meal, we played Pictionary.  A “laid back” Christmas, as the Aussies say.